Thursday, July 27, 2006

My Mommy's Meatloaf

I played around with my mom's meatloaf recipe until I came up with this one that I like a lot. In fact, we had it for dinner last night. And it's really easy, so there's no reason why a non-cooking type person (you know who you are) couldn't make it, too!

My Mommy's Meatloaf

2 lbs ultra-lean ground beef (or chicken, or turkey)
1 can cream of something soup (I used mushroom last night)
1 cup rolled (non-instant) oats
1/4 cup dehydrated onions
2 large eggs
garlic powder to taste
italian seasoning to taste
dash black pepper

Normally I would also include a dash of salt, but the cream of whatever soup has lots of sodium in it to begin with!

Preheat over to 350 degrees. Put onions in small custard bowl and add just enough hot water to remoisten. Set aside.

Keep plenty of paper towels on hand for this one! (There's lots of mixing by hand!)

In large mixing bowl, combine meat, soup, eggs. Squish together with your bare hands until all items are well mixed. Dump in the oats, squish with hands some more until well mixed. Add in onions, squish with hands more until well-mixed. Add your spices and - you guessed it - squish with hands until well mixed.

For a large loaf, shape ingredients into large loaf pan (approximately 9 x 5 x 3 inches - glass or metal works). Some people like to make a pretty pattern on the top of the loaf with ketchup. I chose not to . Cook for about 1 1/4 hours.

Or, if you want to divide into two smaller loaves, you can use two smaller loaf dishes and cook for only about 45-60 minutes.

Just to be safe, though, cut through the middle and check done-ness before serving. You don't want the meatloaf to "moo" at you!

P.S. Left-over meatloaf makes YUMMY cold-meatloaf sandwiches the next day!!!

3 comments:

ann said...

OKay, somebody stop me if this is a dumb idea. I'd probably put all the ingredients in teh food processor and pulse it a few times, and then transfer it to the loaf pan. Would that be disgusting? Cause I like mixing things in my food processor.

Becca said...

Meat in the food processor could get a little...soupy. I'd only recommend it if you're starting with chunks of meat you want to grind, not with already ground beef.

To get a nice meatloaf that isn't too dense, the trick is to combine the ingredients with mashing them to a pulp--that's why your hands are better for this job than the food processor.

Jenn-Jenn, the Mother Hen said...

Becca's right. The meat would be two liquidy if you put it in the processor. Plus, you'd lose a lot of the meat because of it sticking to the blades in the bottom. Your hands work better on this one. Although, one tip is make sure your eggs aren't too cold when you do this. That cold travels all the way up your arms to your elbows and can hurt like the dickens!